Picking Targets

Choosing a target to study in VDS is a tricky endeavor. There are several guidelines and constraints that we must adhere to. Here are a few of them.

Picking Targets
Find ones that are in neglected diseases (i.e. less commonly studied)

Choose some disease organisms on the NIAID target list of Category A.B.C pathogens.

http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/BiodefenseRelated/Biodefense/research/Pages/CatA.aspx
Also look at J Craig Venter site


Can choose any target if we know the DNA sequence since we can do Overlap PCR

Has an Xray crystal structure available:

• PDB (Protein Data Bank)
• PSI (Protein Structure Initiative)
• SGC (Structural Genomics Consortium)
• CSGID (Center for Structural Genomics of Infectious Diseases)

But that have easy/cheap enzyme assays – phosphatases, carbonic anhydrases
Phosphatases
Carbonic anhydrases





The trick is ideally we want it to have a crystal structure, and we want it to have been shown to be expressible by someone else.